“HELL BROKE LOOSE”
“Then hell broke loose. With a mighty, hideous, screeching burst of noise, hundreds of guns spoke. The men in the front trenches were deafened by the sharp reports of the field-guns spitting out their shells at close range to cut through the Germans’ barbed wire entanglements. In some cases the trajectory of these vicious missiles was so flat that they passed only a few feet above the British trenches.
“The din was continuous. An officer who had the curious idea of putting his ear to the ground said it was as though the earth were being smitten great blows with a Titan’s hammer. After the first few shells had plunged screaming amid clouds of earth and dust into the German trenches, a dense pall of smoke hung over the German lines. The sickening fumes of lyddite blew back into the British trenches. In some places the troops were smothered in earth and dust or even spattered with blood from the hideous fragments of human bodies that went hurtling through the air. At one point the upper half of a German officer, his cap crammed on his head, was blown into one of our trenches.